Cambridge Library Collection - Archaeology
2 total works
Brought up in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, John Collingwood Bruce (1805–92) was fascinated by the antiquities of the north of England, and made an especial study of the impressive ruins of the 'Roman Wall'. He published this work in 1851, using both the writings of medieval and recent historians, and his own and others' field surveys and excavations. It describes the route of the wall from the Solway to Wallsend, and the surviving structures such as forts and milecastles along its length. Bruce also discusses and illustrates the Roman artefacts discovered around the wall, from pottery and nails to funerary monuments, which give insights into the lives of the soldiers from across the Roman empire who were stationed at this northern outpost. His argument that Hadrian was the builder of the wall reminds us that, until the mid-nineteenth century, it was thought to have been the idea of the later emperor Septimius Severus.
After the success of his 1851 book on the Roman Wall (also reissued in this series), in 1863 John Collingwood Bruce (1805-92) published this shorter work, intended as 'a guide to pilgrims journeying along the Barrier of the Lower Isthmus'. Designed 'for the field, not the library table', it sought 'to inform the traveller what he is to look for, and to assist him in examining it'. Bruce first gives a short history of the wall, including medieval and more recent accounts, and then an overview of the 73-mile structure itself, from Wallsend in the east to Bowness in the west. The remainder of the book, illustrated with maps and line engravings, leads the traveller from section to section, noting details such as the re-use of Roman masonry in more recent buildings. This guide was enormously popular, and newly revised versions continue to be published in the twenty-first century.